The Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has unanimously upheld the conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor on eleven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and affirmed the fifty-year sentence imposed by the Trial Chamber. In April 2012, an SCSL Trial Chamber had found Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting crimes that the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council rebel forces had committed against Sierra Leone's civilian population over a five-year period, as well as planning, with RUF Battlefield...
International Law in Brief
International Law in Brief (ILIB) is a forum that provides updates on current developments in international law from the editors of ASIL's International Legal Materials.
The International Labour Organization's (ILO) Domestic Workers Convention came into force on September 5, 2013. The Convention was adopted by the ILO in 2011 and required ratification by two ILO member States to become binding international law; to date, eight ILO member States have ratified the Convention. An estimated 50 million individuals are employed as domestic workers globally, and the Convention recognizes such employees' entitlement to basic labor rights such as weekly rest periods, set hours, and a minimum wage.
A special Chamber convened by order of the Vice-President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has, by two to one, upheld a defense motion for disqualification of Judge Frederik Harhoff from the Prosecutor v. Vojislav Šešelj case. The disqualification is based on a letter that Harhoff wrote dated June 6, 2013, which the special Chamber found demonstrated an unacceptable appearance of bias in favor of conviction. In the letter, which became publicly available through the media and the Internet, Judge Harhoff criticized a number of recent ICTY Appeals...
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights adopted Resolution 234 concerning the right to nationality. The Commission reaffirmed that the right to nationality is a fundamental human right, and calls upon African States to "refrain from taking discriminatory nationality measures and to repeal laws which deny or deprive persons of their nationality." The Resolution particularly calls upon states to adopt legislation aimed at preventing statelessness, such as: recognizing that all children have a right to the nationality of the State where they were born; prohibiting arbitrary denial...